Some knowledge of the enormous wealth that has accrued to Spain from her Cuban possessions may be gained from the following quotation from "Cuba and the Cubans," published in New York in 1850 by Raimundo Cabrera:
"Oh, we are truly rich!
"From 1812 to 1826, Cuba, with her own resources, covered the expenditures of the treasury. Our opulence dates from that period. We had already sufficient negro slaves to cut down our virgin forests, and ample authority to force them to work …
"By means of our vices and our luxury, and in spite of the hatred of everything Spanish, which Moreno attributed to us, we sent, in 1827, the first little million of hard cash to the treasury of the nation. From that time until 1864 we continued to send yearly to the mother country two millions and a half of the same stuff. According to several Spanish statisticians, these sums amounted, in 1864, to $89,107,287. We were very rich, don't you see? tremendously rich. We contributed more than five million dollars towards the requirements of the Peninsular—$5,372,205. We paid, in great part, the cost of the war in Africa. The individual donations alone amounting to fabulous sums.
"But of course we have never voted for our own imposts; they have been forced upon us because we are so rich. In 1862, we had in a state of production the following estates: 2,712 stock farms, 1,521 sugar plantations, 782 coffee plantations, 6,175 cattle ranches, 18 cocoa plantations, 35 cotton plantations, 22,748, produce farms, 11,737 truck farms, 11,541 tobacco plantations, 1,731 apiaries, 153 country resorts, 243 distilleries, 468 tile works, 504 lime kilns, 63 charcoal furnaces, 54 cassava-bread factories, and 61 tanneries. To-day I do not know what we possess, because there are no statistics, and because the recently organized assessment is a hodge podge and a new burden; but we have more than at that time; surely we must have a great deal more.
"For a very long time we have borne the expenses of the convict settlement of Fernando Po. We paid for the ill-starred Mexican expedition, the costs of the war in San Domingo, and with the republics of the Pacific. How can we possibly be poor? While England, France and Holland appropriate large sums for the requirements of their colonies, Spain does not contribute a single cent for hers. We do not need it, we are wading deep in rivers of gold. If the fertility of our soil did not come to our rescue, we must, perforce, have become enriched by the system of protection to the commerce of the mother country. … The four columns of the tariff are indeed a sublime invention.. Our agricultural industries require foreign machinery, tools and utensils, which Spain does not supply, but, as she knows that we have gold to spare, she may make us pay for them very high. And since our sugar is to be sold to the United States .. never mind what they cost. When there are earthquakes in Andalusia and inundations in Murcia, hatred does not prevent us from sending to our afflicted brethren large sums … (which sometimes fail to reach their destination.)
"We are opulent? Let us see if we are. From the earliest times down to the present, the officials who come to Cuba, amass, in the briefest space of time, fortunes, to be dissipated in Madrid, and which appear never to disturb their consciences. This country is very rich, incalculably rich. In 1830 we contributed $6,120,934; in 1840, $9,605,877; in 1850, $10,074,677; in 1860, $29,610,779. During the war we did not merely contribute, we bled. We had to carry the budget of $82,000,000.
"We count 1,500,000 inhabitants, that is to say, one million and a half of vicious, voluptuous, pompous spendthrifts, full of hatred and low passions, who contribute to the public charges, and never receive a cent in exchange, who have given as much as $92 per capita, and who at the present moment pay to the state what no other taxpayers the world over have ever contributed. Does anyone say that we are not prodigiously, enviably rich?"